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While anyone who reads my blog knows, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But there is one conspiracy, one built on money and myth, that I want to expose. It’s Daylight Savings Time- The Big Fraud. Every year, we set our clocks forward or back in an effort to pretend that time is relative. I’m not writing about how when it’s noon in New York, it’s 9:00 a.m. in Los Angeles. That is a constant, something determined by location, and not something changed at the whim of some legislators. But when the sun is directly overhead, it’s always high noon, right? Wrong. It’s 11:00 a.m. real time when observing daylight savings time. But why this pretense? Why pretend the time is not what it is? The argument is that it saves energy, but I will show that it is a dated and invalid one. Plus, the negative affects are often ignored. I won’t do that.

Ben Franklin-A smart man with a dumb idea

It started with Benjamin Franklin. He was awakened by a noise at 6:00 a.m. one April morning in Paris and was surprised to see that the sun was giving light to the day. Being that he was 78 years old at the time and a scientist, I do find this rather surprising. However, as the “penny saved is a penny earned” guy, he decided that a lot of money spent on candles could be saved if the work day started earlier and ended earlier instead of working after dark. He proposed having this happen from March 20th to September 20th. Since Parisians then usually started the work day at noon and continued until late at night, he calculated a large savings. He wrote, “For the great benefit of this discovery, thus freely communicated and bestowed by me on the public, I demand neither place, pension, exclusive privilege, nor any other reward whatever. I expect only to have the honour of it.” (click here for entire text) Interestingly, he didn’t just propose people start work earlier and get off earlier in the spring and summer, a much simpler solution than messing with clocks.

No one tried messing with time until the Germans and the British started changing the clocks to save money used to light factories during World War I. The British plan was to add 80 minutes, in four separate increments of 20 minutes each on four successive Sundays. The first Sunday was May 21, 1916, and they termed the change Summer Time. But it was not adopted in America.

Train Wrecks-A good reason for standardizing time.

Originally, all times were local, established by sundials, rather than standardized. That meant noon was different in towns not that far apart. But it could be confusing. Let’s say you were to meet someone at noon in a town a hundred miles away. But was that noon your time or the other person’s time? Since the distance usually was not only East-West or North-South, it would be difficult to know how much difference there was in time between the two. This problem was exacerbated with trains whose arrival and departure times needed to be standardized for scheduling as well as for safety, so two trains didn’t hit head on because of time confusion. So time zones were created. With a small country like the United Kingdom, there was only one time zone, Greenwich Mean Time. Established when Britannia ruled the waves, it became the reference point for time zones. But America was different, far too large for noon in New York to be noon in San Francisco and the railroads devised their own until 1884. That was when the International Meridian Conference met in Washington DC, and drew up time zones on the globe. Although Greenwich was set as zero point, interestingly enough the French showed Paris as such on their maps until 1911. Franco-Anglo rivalry has deep roots. The U.S. government did not officially adopt the time zones until March 19, 1918. At the same time, it established Daylight Saving Time (more commonly known as Daylight Savings Time) from the last Sunday in March until the last Sunday in October.

Factories in World War I-The real reason for introducing DST

Daylight Savings Time was not popular in the U.S., but we entered the war on April 6, 1918, so the energy-saving advantages in that day gave a strong reason for it during wartime. However, it was repealed when the war ended with enough voters in Congress to override President Wilson’s veto. It became a local option. A few major eastern cities and states kept the “spring forward, fall back” schedule, but most of the U.S. happily abandoned losing sleep for much of the year. In 1942, it again became a federal law because of World War II, becoming optional again when it was over in 1945. Once more, the local communities decided, with some cities and counties choosing to follow DST, while a neighboring ones might not. Confusion reigned. On a 35-mile stretch of Route 2 between Moundsville, W.V., and Steubenville, Ohio, there were seven time changes. Imagine trying to set up a bus schedule of stops along that route! The Uniform Time Act of 1966 made standardized times, including the Daylight Savings Time schedule from the last Sunday of April to the last Sunday of October, within each time zone. Only states or territories could opt out of DST, not cities. The ones to opt out were ones close to the equator, where the daylight hours were the most consistent through the year, which were Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.

Waiting to get gas in 1973

In the name of energy savings, Congress has continued to mess with our clocks. During the gas crunch of the 1970’s, it passed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973, which greatly lengthened he duration of DST, first starting it on the first Sunday in January, then changing it to the last Sunday in February. That act expired in 1975, however, Congress changed the start and stop dates to the first Sunday of April and to the last Sunday of October in 1986. Not satisfied with just a little messing with our minds and time, in 2007 they went for the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. All these expansions of DST are based upon flawed information and assumptions.

Main user of energy according to 1975 study

A 1975 study by the Department of Transportation estimated that Daylight Savings Time saved about one percent on energy usage per day it was in effect. This was based upon the premise that most of the electricity used was for lighting. Even if that were true then, it is not now. Air conditioning, televisions and other such high electricity usages don’t care whether the sun is shining or not. In fact, making people get up before the sun is up, which often happens with DST, more than offsets any gains on the other end. A study by the Department of Energy in 2008 concluded that any saving was negligible. (click here for study) In fact, another study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2008 concluded that it was actually costing more to have DST. (click here for study) Yet, the 1975 DOT study continues to have the most sway.

Farmers work by the sun, not clocks

Another claim is that it helps farmers get more work time in the fields. In fact, when the California Legislature scuttled efforts to end DST in 2017, that was one of the justifications. My father, who was raised on a farm, thought that the farmer argument was laughable, something only a person who had never worked on a farm would say. Farmers don’t work by the clock, he told me, they work by the sun. Changing the clock only causes problems. Because other business run by the clock, farmers are forced to start earlier, disrupting their established schedule to comply with those of trucking companies and such. In fact, farmers were instrumental in getting DST revoked in 1919. Alas, they are less of the voting population now and have far less clout. As a side note, my father, who left the farm and got a job at GE, had to get up at six every morning to go to work and DST forced him to get up before the sun for much of the year.

“At least I had another hour of daylight!”

A recent article in Forbes gave the five most common justifications for DST and why they are wrong. (click here for article) It would seem that the so-called pluses are “fake news.” What about the negatives? We humans do not like our sleep habits changed. Although there are conflicting studies regarding auto accidents and fatalities, with increases right after time changes well established, pedestrian fatalities also take a sharp uptick, as much as triple in some areas. School children are very much at risk since when the change occurs, they are sometimes waiting for buses in the dark while groggy drivers speed by. Also, there are more heart attacks when DST starts. People have less sleep, often staying up later on the “new” time because their body is accustomed to it, while being forced to get up earlier. All medical research shows that not getting enough sleep is detrimental to your health. CNN recently did a piece on the many health risks from DST, such as strokes and heart attacks. (click here for article)WebMD stated that “Moving our clocks in either direction changes the principal time cue, light, for setting and resetting our 24-hour natural cycle, or circadian rhythm. In doing so, our internal clock becomes out of sync or mismatched with our current day-night cycle.” The universal opinion from all studies is that Daylight Savings Time is hazardous to your health. Yet, unlike smoking, using opioids, or excessive drinking, there are no large movements to stop it, no petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures sent to legislatures. Like the mythical ostrich’s head in the sand, the body politic acts like ignoring the threat will make it not exist. But it does.

So, why have DST? It does give more time after work for outdoor activities like playing golf or grilling steaks. Obviously, things like watching TV or movies, playing computer games or mucking around on social media are sun-neutral and do not benefit from DST. While outdoor activities are good, the cost to get one more hour is too high. Why not play nine holes before work and nine holes after instead of a full eighteen after? Why not put lights on the patio for late-night grilling? Daylight Savings Time is no longer needed. It, like smoking and three-martini lunches, has been exposed as a danger, not worth the cost. It’s time to kill it so we can live.

If you’ve seen the movie Dunkirk, you know that it was not a British victory, but snatching disaster from the jaws of defeat (click here). Amazingly, an armada of civilian small craft were able to assist the Royal Navy in evacuating 338,000 men from the beaches. The movie gives the nitty-gritty view of this action, the view of the soldier, sailor or aviator who is just trying to survive. No noble speeches by soldiers dying on the beach or British civilians braving German planes to save the remnants of their army. Churchill, the eloquent statesman who provided the impetus for the operation, doesn’t even have a cameo. Dialogue is minimal and terse, but that is often more realistic. However, there was one glaring omission in Dunkirk: the Isle of Man.

What, you may ask, does an island in the Irish Sea have to do with a rescue of the British Expeditionary Force from the coast of France? I mean, Great Britain is between them. The answer is the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, or IoMSPCo, is the longest continuously running passenger shipping ompany in the world (click here). Yes, little Isle of Man’s ferry line is the oldest in the world. What was its role at Dunkirk? Eight of the steam packet ships answered the call to serve the nation and sailed to Dunkirk, crewed mainly by Manxmen. These ships were unarmed, at the mercy of German aircraft. Three of them were lost to enemy fire. That’s a pretty high loss ratio, but these were unarmed vessels.

RMS Fenella under attack at Dunkirk

Twin Screw Steamship (TSS) Fenella (the name is derived from Fionualla, a daugher of the Celtic sea god Lir who was changed into a swan for 900 years) was commissioned a Royal Mail Ship (RMS) at the outbreak of the war. She sailed to Dunkirk. While embarking troops, she was hit by enemy fire. They and the crew evacuated and she sank in the harbor. The Germans later raised her and rechristened her the Reval, but the RAF sunk her again and finally in 1944.

TSS Mona’s Queen during peacetime

The RMS Mona’s Queen (Mona is an early name for the Isle of Man) was a veteran of evacuating refugees from French and Belgian ports by the time of Dunkirk. Mona’s Queen’s first trip to Dunkirk brought 1,200 men back to England. On her second trip, she struck a mine as she approached the harbor and sank in two minutes. Twenty-four of her crew of fifty-six were lost, seventeen of them Manx. Fourteen manned the engine room, trapped as the ship sank. The ship was never raised, designated a “water grave” for the men.

The veteran ABV King Orry

The last ship lost at Dunkirk was the RMS King Orry, named after a legendary king of the Isle of Man. King Orry was already a veteran by Dunkirk. In the First World Way, she was an Armed Boarding Vessel (ABV) and had boarded suspicious ships. She seized a German freighter and an oil tanker. She was the only representative of the British mercantile marine (same as the American merchant marine) at Scapa Flow, Scotland, when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered on November 21, 1918. Called back to service for Dunkirk, she carried 1,131 men back to England on her first trip. On her second, she was badly damaged by German aircraft as she entered the harbor. In order to prevent blocking the harbor, her valiant crew sailed out after midnight. She sank and other ships picked up the survivors.

Although hard data is difficult to find, the Manx population was less than 55,000 in 1940. The United Kingdom number about 47,500,000. The Manx ships rescued 25,000 men from the beaches of Dunkirk out of 338,000 saved. That means an island just over one percent of the population saved over seven percent of the men at Dunkirk. One out of every fourteen men rescued came home on a Manx ship. Good show, Isle of Man. Although the BBC gave a nod to the Manx (click here), the movie did not. Shame on you, Christopher Nolan.

Nowadays, fake news, alternative news (#altnews), and alternative facts are hot topics. Both sides of the political spectrum accuse the other of engaging in the practice while doing the same themselves. They both claim they want objective news. But does such an animal exist? Did it ever exist? The answer to both questions is “No.” MSNBC, Fox, CNN and such stations all have a slant, a perspective. Even ones like ABC, NBC and CBS do as well. Whether it be an obvious bias by reporters or commentators (as is evident in some) or even merely by what they choose to report, what questions they ask and how much time they spend on certain issues, news sources are biased. That’s true of newspapers, radio and online reporting as well. While I am not truly objective (Who is?), I can see that even for sources with whom I agree, they have a bias. But while I may not be objective, I am logical. There is an old saying that there is nothing new under the sun. Fake news, alternative news, and alternative facts have been that way all through recorded history.

Ramses II and the battle of Kadesh

We think of history as a study of facts. That is not the case. It is the study of what has been recorded by people about events. And, as I said, no one is truly objective. The first account of a battle recorded was the Battle of Kadesh in modern-day Syria. Ramses II of Egypt led an expedition against King Muwatalli II of the Hittites and in 1274 B.C., they met in battle. According to the detailed account, Ramses foolishly stumbled into a trap laid by Muwatalli, misled by Hittite informants who were actually spies. He divided his forces and the army he led was attacked by a much larger Hittite force with 2,500 chariots. According to the detailed account, Ramses bravely rallied his forces and drove the Hittites from the field, soundly defeating them. Sounds factual, doesn’t it? However, this account was written by the Egyptians after the battle. The hieroglyphic account shows Ramses in his chariot, firing arrows at the foe. There is a saying that history is written by the victors, but it can also be written by those who want to be remembered as the victors. There is a Hittite account, not nearly so detailed, that claims a Hittite victory. Most historians, after a study of the account and the aftermath of the battle, think it was a draw, that neither side had a clear-cut victory. (click here for full account) Since the Hittites continued to occupy Kadesh after the battle, they may have won. But, unless someone invents a working time machine, we can only guess. Such is the case with much of history and, unfortunately, news.

Julius Caesar, the conqueror

The next example is Julius Caesar’s Gallic War Commentaries. It is the best account of the Roman conquest of Gaul, yet how much can we trust? Caesar wrote them in the third person, no doubt to make them sound less subjective. After all, they are the tale of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul and were a prime propaganda piece for his struggle to become the top dog in Rome. Caesar did conquer Gaul. We know that because it became a Roman province. Did he exaggerate the armies he beat? Very likely. Since there was no way he could have counted the quarter of a million Celts in the relief army trying to help the besieged Gallic chief Vercingetorix and his supposedly eighty thousand men, no historian believes the numbers. Although the Roman army was the elite force of their day, Caesar had maybe forty thousand men and that made it eight-to-one odds against him, at best. (click here for full account) It simply made good press back home to add a few tens of thousands to the enemy forces they conquered. While it is a history of that conquest, it was also meant to justify Caesar’s seizing territory that was not Rome’s. One of the key points in Roman expansion had been that it justified doing so because of being attacked. In Caesar’s case, no one was attacking him. However, if an ally in Gaul was attacked, he would rush to their aid. Then he would stay. Slowly but surely, Caesar expanded Roman territory to the Rhine and even made a foray into Britain, all without authorization from Rome. His enemies in Rome cried foul, but he sent back a fortune in spoils of war as well as establishing more income from the Republic in taxes and tributes from the newly-conquered Celtic tribes, along with his embellished battle accounts to bolster his standing. Along the way, he made a sizable fortune for himself from his share of the spoils. He entered Gaul an impoverished patrician and left a very wealthy, popular general. Within a couple of years, he was appointed dictator of the Republic for life.

Recorders of history often used their accounts to promote their views, twisting facts to fit them. There were no newspapers in the ancient world, but when they were invented, they became another source of disinformation. There are many examples, but one stands out because it gave us a term used to describe such reporting: yellow journalism. When the armored cruiser USS Maine blew up on a “visit” to Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, 261 of the 355 men on board died. America was stunned and wanted to know why. Now the ship was there to protect American interests in Cuba during an insurrection by Cuban rebels against Spain, who still owned it as a colony. Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal started a campaign to blame Spain, claiming the explosion was due to a mine or a bomb and demanding an American response. While a Spanish investigation saw evidence of an internal explosion in the coal bunker, an American investigation by rather amateur investigators concluded it was caused by a mine. America made demands on Spain, finally demanding it surrender control of Cuba to America. Spain responded by declaring war on America, a major mistake. The role of the two newspapers in forging popular opinion and political pressure cannot be ignored. They incited the public, who adopted the slogan, “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” The term “yellow journalism” came from the New York World and the New York Journal, because of a cartoon character that first appeared in the World and then in both papers, the Yellow Kid. Although originally a secondary character in a black and white cartoon drawn by Richard F. Outcault, the Kid gained fame when he started appearing in a yellow nightshirt in the newly colored Sunday paper. The two papers that carried him were soon known as the Yellow Papers and their policy of sensational headlines, wild exaggerations and inflammatory accusations became known as “yellow journalism.” (click here for more) As a side note, later evaluations of the evidence concluded that the explosion was most likely a result of volatile firedamp released from the bituminous coal used as fuel. (click here for full report) So much for truth in journalism.

When I was teaching American history to a middle school class in the late 1980’s, I broke the class into thirds and assigned each group the job of making a TV news story about the sinking of the USS Maine. One group did it as a Spanish station, one as an American station and one as a Cuban station. They then acted out their news coverage. The Spanish one did it as a tragic accident, but emphasized that the Spanish government had nothing to do with it. The Cuban station blamed the Spanish and the American group really got into the assignment. They had an anchor desk doing the main story then kept breaking to “live” interviews. Some students even portrayed survivors with bandages and fake blood. All of them told the story with a mine causing the explosion and that the Spanish must have done it. While we did not settle the true cause of the explosion with the assignment, the kids got the idea: “news” is not so much about truth and facts as it is about flash and innuendo.

It is interesting to note that fiction also plays a part in false news or false history. In this day of Facebook, tweets and questionable websites, it is becoming all the rage. It can make such an impression that it becomes accepted fact, especially when it gets in mainstream media. A woman was quoted in a newspaper saying that “psychic healer Edgar Cayce pointed to Nevada City (CA) as the first ‘City of Light’ in the world.” The woman got that from an article in the spoof news-site, Nevada County Scooper. (Click here for a laugh.) Considering that the site’s article said Nevada City was competing with “sacred” McDonald’s in Sedona, AZ for being Cayce’s “spiritual vortex of the known universe,” she should have been suspicious. However, now this joke has become archived online as a fact, or at least claimed as one, in a regular newspaper.

Richard III

But sometimes the fiction has a more political purpose. Consider the play by William Shakespeare, Richard III. The book, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, that was first published in 1577 is widely accepted as Shakespeare’s historical source for many of his plays. (click here) The three witches in Macbeth first appear there and that can be no coincidence. However, like the witches who morphed from Holinshed’s nymphs to Shakespeare’s hags, the history was not slavishly followed. Even a cursory reading of Shakespeare’s play reveal a conniving, manipulative, unscrupulous and murderous character. He is even more evil than Holinshed’s version. Although he may well have eliminated his nephews Edward V and Richard (definitely not a nice thing to do), he did not kill the Earl of Warwick and Edward of Westminster in order to marry Anne Neville, as he says in the play, and all indications are that he was upset when his brother, King Edward IV, executed their brother, the Duke of Clarence, rather than plotted it. The man Shakespeare described as a hunchbacked “bottled spider” did suffer from severe scoliosis, but was still a noted warrior who died in battle trying to physically come to grips with Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII. His acts while king were noted for their concern for his kingdom, not personal gain. So why did Shakespeare make Richard III the epitome of evil in his play? Consider when he wrote the play, 1597. Elizabeth I was queen, the granddaughter of Henry VII, the man whose crown came from the head of the slain Richard III, the rightful king. The Tudors were not known to suffer any questioning of their right to the crown. It was a good way to secure a room in the Tower until execution. But praising them, making them seem glorious rulers was a way to royal favor. What would you do if you were Shakespeare? But the picture painted by the playwright is the one that has lasted through history. When the play is on stage, Richard usually has a hunchback and lurks in dark corners, monologuing his nasty plots. Fiction has created fact.

While I could go on about how society takes fiction as fact, that is another topic, one that will include conspiracy theories. Next time. But remember that in the TV show House, Dr. House’s favorite adage was, “Everybody lies.” I don’t say everybody does, but far too many do. Keep that in mind when you watch, hear or read the “news.”

This is the second part of my 1995 interview with George MacDonald Fraser on the Isle of Man. His knowledge of history shown in his books, gained without a formal degree, was impressive. I went to my first writers seminar, on the Isle of Man, a few years later. One wanna-be writer criticized Mr. Fraser for being too accurate in his historical fiction! I met with Mr. Fraser one more time, in 1999. He was doing a book signing of Flashman and the Tiger at a local bookstore. After chatting for a while, where I told him of my own writing efforts, he kindly offered to allow me to use his name when I contacted his agent. This was before many revisions of my book and it was not print-ready. Of course she declined to represent me, but did send a nice personal note. I wonder what she thought of him recommending a hack-writer like I was then to contact her. George MacDonald Fraser passed away in 2008. He was a polite and gracious man.

RLC: Moving along to your books on the Gordon Highlanders that you based on your own
experiences. GMF: They’re sort of half truth. Some of them are truer than others. RLC: Right. Are most of the people in them real characters and you changed the names to protect the guilty, as it were?
GMF: That’s right. Most of them recognized themselves. They couldn’t help that, you know. Well, they don’t mind, so that’s okay.
RLC: That’s good.
GMF: I think they’re rather pleased. The final amalgamation took place last year. The Gordons ceased to be and went in with the previously amalgamated Camerons and Seaforths. They have become one regiment, simply called the Highlanders. I was greatly delighted that the new design for The General Danced at Dawn they’ve adopted as their Christmas card. Mind that was some time back.
RLC: I’ve noticed, to return to Flashman, most of the wiser are the non-commissioned, whereas the officers many times seem to be either pompous or foolish, or both.

21 year-old Lt. George MacDonald Fraser of the Gordon Highlanders

GMF: Of course, a great many of them were. I think it’s fair to say that you get a fair number of mutton heads among the professional military. Certainly the NCO’s, the non-coms, those who rose at all were pretty good. Yes, but on the other hand there were some soldiers who were absolute geniuses, there’s no doubt about it, around at that time. They come in all shapes and sizes. Generally, in wartime, the best men get to the top, thank God. That happens in every country, I suppose.
RLC: Would you consider your military experience a positive, good one?
GMF: I loved it. Yes. I liked soldiering, but I wouldn’t want to be a peacetime soldier. There doesn’t seem to be much point. And, of course, the huge change that came over Britain after the war. From having had this enormous empire, suddenly it had gone, pretty well. There wouldn’t have been the opportunities for getting on as a soldier that there had been.
RLC: Is there any little anecdote that you could share that’s not in your books?
GMF: Nothing really particularly. I’ve milked pretty dry by now. I think they’re all in there. I’ve covered my times with the Gordons in those three books of short stories and my time in Burma in a sort of an autobiography that I wrote a couple of years ago, called Quartered Safe Out Here. Outside of that, not a great deal. You know, military life tends to be, on the whole, fairly humdrum. RLC: You’re more noted among some people for your history writing. The Steel Bonnets is very important to the Scots.

Steel Bonnets- the story of the Border reivers

GMF: That was a labor of love . I’d been born in the Border country and no one had ever done it. There had been lots of little romantic histories and so on, but no one had ever done a real history, a factual history of it, so I decided to do that. The only thing is that it could have been ten times as long. I had to be selective because there was so much that there just wasn’t room for. It was an enormous book as it was.
RLC: Do you find that you are drawn to certain historical eras in your studies?
GMF: Yes, the Victorian era and the sixteenth century, particularly. Those are the ones I write about because by now, they’re the ones I know most about.
RLC: You have also done some fine work on American history, The Buffalo Soldiers.
GMF: Well, thank you. As in the Flashmans, American history in the last century is terrific. It’s a fantastic story.
RLC: Basically, though, you confined yourself to British and American. That’s your primary focus.
GMF: Oh yes. For one thing, the language. I would love to have written, or be able to write the history of the buccaneers. But I don’t speak French, I don’t speak Spanish, and I don’t speak Dutch. If you’re going to do it, you ought to be able to research in all those languages. Also, it would call for two or three years travel around the Caribbean and, tempting though it might be, I think I might probably get fed up with it.
RLC: I note that you basically do historical novels or history. It shows your primary interest. You don’t do a lot of fiction like Archer or someone like that where you can sit down and reel it off. Yours are more difficult by far.
GMF: Yes, you have to do the research and, as I say, that is the bit that I enjoy most. No, I have no desire to write about my own time at all. Everybody else is doing it, so why should I. My daughter writes. She has published three novels and are all contemporary, because she was a barrister. Although, she’s now got four children, so she is retired. They’re about the law, but that’s her particular area. No, I’ve no great interest in the twentieth century.
RLC: Well, we’re very appreciative of your works. That’s what drew me is the historical aspect. That’s my great love. Are you working on any particular writing now?
GMF: Not at the moment, no. I should. I’ve been lazy. Of late I wrote a little book about Border history, a little piece of fiction called The Candlemas Road. The BBC asked me to dramatize it. I then dramatized it. It went out a couple of weeks ago. That is the last work that I’ve done.
RLC: So that should be appearing fairly soon, then? GMF: No, it’s been broadcasted.
RLC: Oh, when?
GMF: About three weeks ago. Middle of July.
RLC: I think that’s one the saddest things is that we don’t know about things like this because BBC doesn’t publicize much.
GMF: No, it doesn’t.
RLC: American TV tells you what’s coming. They put it in TV Guide for weeks. Here you have to dig for it on the BBC.
GMF: Lots of things pass by. There was a program I wish I’d seen called “Highlanders,” which Sean Connery narrated, just a week ago. It was about an hour long documentary about Culloden and the ’45 Rebellion. I missed it. Again, they didn’t publicize it.
RLC: I didn’t even hear about it. I guess if you are what we call a “couch potato” in the States you have a better chance.
GMF: You just have to study the programs in advance, which I never do.
RLC: One enjoyable story of yours is about your grandmother who ran the Highland inn and the still operation.
GMF: That’s almost entirely true, that story. That’s the trouble. I just don’t have any connection with the Highlands now at all, because all the older members of my family, of course, are dead and I sort of lost touch. In fact, I haven’t been back in the Highlands for ten years or more, although it is just across the way.
RLC: Have you ever gone to any of the games there? Of course, the games are different there than in the States. In the States, they’re more like a Highland fair, with games only as a part of the event.
GMF: No, the only Highland gathering I’ve been to since I was a child was the one in North Carolina, and that went on for two or three days. Obviously, they’re a big thing and they take place in all parts of the USA and Canada.

R.L. Cherry in Fraser tartan kilt before marching in the 2105 4th of July parade

RLC: Yes, I was involved in Southern California. They have large ones in Santa Rosa in Northern California and Costa Mesa in the South. So then I take it you don’t have a kilt?
GMF: Oh, yes. Yes. RLC: You do? Great!
GMF: I got it, actually, before I went to Grandfather Mountain and have worn it several times since for weddings and that sort of thing. The peculiar thing that came out of The General Danced at Dawn is that about five or six years ago Simon Fraser University in British Columbia wrote to me and said we have read all about this, your story about people dancing 32, 64, 128ths in reels. We intend to dance a 256-some reel. And they did. They sent me a video of it. And they actually did it. As a result of that, the year before last, the Toronto Country Dance Society decided they would dance a 512-some reel. They got dancers from all over the United States and Canada, New Zealand, oh God knows where. Again, I saw a video of it and it’s in the Guiness Book of Records now. But, in fact, I think it wasn’t as genuine as the 256-some they did in British Columbia, because that was one bloody, great reel. The Toronto looked more to me like a lot of groups of reels. But, still, it was accepted by the experts, so I guess it was all right. It was an impressive sight, I’ll tell you. 512 maniacs weaving in and out, you know. They announced they were going to have a shot at the 1024-some. They’re not getting me, I know that.
RLC: You’ve met the Frasers at Grandfather Mountain. Have you had much contact with other Frasers in Scotland?
GMF: No, not really.
RLC: Did you ever meet Lord Lovat or Lady Saltoun.
GMF: No, I never did. That was a piece of one-ups-manship by Charlton Heston. He had met Lord Lovat. No, I never met him, old MacShimi. He had a gathering of Frasers in the 1950’s, and I think one of my uncles went to it. They figured they would get a few hundred and they got 70,000. They must have eaten him out of house and home.
I haven’t had much contact with other Frasers. There was Lord Fraser, who bought the paper on which I worked, the Glasgow Herald. He was a financier and businessman, died about thirty years ago. He was a distant cousin of mine. I mean, okay, if you are a Lovat Fraser, you’re probably all related some way, anyway. But he was a traceable sort of second cousin. He was the man who bought Harrod’s. There was a huge take-over battle in the ’50’s and he succeeded in buying Harrod’s. He was a tough little bandit. I knew him and his son. But no, one notes the Frasers turning up in various positions, but I’ve not had any particular comings and goings with them.
RLC: There have been a few other Fraser authors. David Fraser, a cousin of Lady Saltoun, has written And We Shall Shock Them, The Killing Times, and others. GMF: The reason my name on my books is George MacDonald Fraser is because it is my middle name, anyway, but also there was a Scottish poet called George S. Fraser. My publisher said that just so there is no confusion, let’s have your middle name. And so there it went. Oh, yes. And then, of course, there’s Antonia Fraser…
RLC: That’s by marriage. GMF: Yes, that’s by marriage.
RLC: Now she’s married to Harold Pinter.
GMF: That’s right. I’ve never met her. Then, I haven’t met many authors. I tend to steer clear of other authors.
RLC: You don’t go to “author clubs?”
GMF: No. I’m trying to think how many authors I know. Kingsley Ames, I think he’s about the only one. Yes, just about. There are one or two on the Island. Then again, we don’t get together. There is an Isle of Man Authors’ Society, but, then again, I don’t attend it. I suppose I feel that an author’s job is writing, not meeting other authors.
RLC: Just because you write doesn’t mean you have the same interests as someone else who writes.
GMF: Quite. I mean you’d just end up talking about royalties, agents, and publishers anyway.

Lord Lovat’s memoirs with great recounting of his time with the Commandos

RLC: Did you ever read Lord Lovat’s book? He wrote March Past.
GMF: No, I didn’t know he’d written one.
RLC: I thought that since you were both military men, it might be of interest.
GMF: The only military Fraser I knew was, again, a cousin, Bill Fraser, who was in the Gordons with me. God knows what happened to him. You lose touch very easily. There are Fraser relatives scattered around the States and Canada. My parents were in touch with them, but him, I’m not. I’ve got a cousin actually living in…What’s the name of the place…not Santa Monica. He was at Venice Beach. He ran a restaurant at Venice Beach. But he’s talking of, and I don’t know whether he’s done it, moving to Houston. Whether he will or not, Lord knows. A lot of Frasers are in the Los Angeles phone book.
RLC: Oh, yes. It’s not quite like British Columbia, but… GMF: British Columbia, oh! And Saskatchewan. My wife and I worked in a newspaper in Regina back in, oh, what 1950, and there were Frasers everywhere. You couldn’t move for the brutes.
RLC: You worked for the Glasgow Herald. What other papers did you work for?
GMF: I worked for a local one in Carlisle, the Carlisle Journal, then went to Canada where I worked for the Regina Leader Post, back to Carlisle, worked the Cumberland News, and then to Glasgow and worked for the Glasgow Herald. That’s my journalistic story. Did over twenty years. It’s a lovely job, newspaper work. I wouldn’t like it now. The new technology. Forget it. It means nothing to me. I don’t really like newspapers nowadays, anyway. For one thing, they’re too damn big. The strain of filling the space is obviously showing in a lot of them.
RLC: Do you find them more sensational now?
GMF: Yes. Oh, standards have slipped. I mean, I sound like a dinosaur, but they have. Not only journalistic ethics, what is permissible and what isn’t. I mean, there’s no holds barred nowadays. But also literacy. I mean, they don’t know the difference between who and whom, may and might, and like and as. I’m appalled at some of the garbage that I see. In fact, I skim the headlines now and rely on television. I don’t want to know what is happening anyway, very much. Forget Bosnia, as far as I’m concerned. That’s just a hell of a mess.
RLC: I don’t think I would want to be one of the soldiers there. Not being able to shoot back and watching people killed in front of your eyes.
GMF: Quite. I don’t think we should have been near it in the first place, or anyone else for that matter, and I think it would have got over a lot quicker without UN interference. Okay, humanitarian efforts, by all means, but to send in observers, the way they have, they’re useless and just hostages. But, that’s the way.
RLC: It’s almost as though now we don’t have clear-cut enemies. We’ve lost the Russian hegemony.
GMF: No. I don’t blame the United States for not wanting to get involved in Yugoslavia. I don’t think any of us should’ve. But that’s not the popular, moralistic view. If any of the back-bench heroes who are always demanding that we should get further involved…okay, let THEM go, if they want to.
RLC: Just out of curiosity, how did you end up on the Isle of Man. You’ve lived in Canada, the U.S., and Scotland.
GMF: Well, there’s nowhere in particular that we belong to, and we knew the Island. When I wrote Flashman, I thought, “I don’t know, but this could be the start of something. And I have no desire to pay ninety percent tax to the British government. So we came over here, thank God. If they altered the tax rate in Britain now, I wouldn’t go back. It’s nice here. We like it and it’s old fashioned and fairly quiet. Not as old fashioned and quiet as it was when we first arrived, but still I prefer it to that mess over yonder.
RLC: How long have you lived here?
GMF: Twenty…twenty-six years.
RLC: You’ve-seen a lot of changes. GMF: And yet, not all that many. It’s still pretty much the same. The number of cars has increased frantically.
RLC: Have you ever been to the TT’s?
GMF: Yes, when we first came. But we haven’t been back since. Okay, you stand and you watch the show going by, you know. It struck me then that it’s the nearest thing to the Roman arena extant. There were six killed in the actual races the year that we watched. It doesn’t seem to be quite so bad now. It’s sooner them than me, you know.
RLC: It’s not even safe to be a bystander at times.

Making a tight turn on the TT race

GMF: Quite. I mean the guy who’s our electrician, the guy we call on if anything goes wrong, he rode seventh in the Senior about twenty years ago. That’s mad! I mean, he really is mad. You can tell by the way he goes about his electrical work. But he’s a good electrician. It seems to me he takes appalling chances. When I consider that course, which, incidentally, Steve McQueen knew intimately. He’d never been here himself. He knew all about the Isle of Man, the TT and the different names and places on the course. I said to him, “the next time you’re in Europe, you’ll have to come over and go ’round it.” He said, “You can drive me. In a leisurely way.” He said, no, he wasn’t into actually racing any more. Our favorite trick with visitors was to take them to the grandstands, then around the course, and then say, “Right, you do that in twenty minutes.” It is a horrifying thought, when you consider it. You know Gray Hill in Douglas? That’s the big hill, down from the grandstands before you come to Quarterbridge. The police used to put their guns, their speed guns, on that. They found one of the riders coming down at 197 mph. When you consider that through the streets of the town…I mean, they’re nuts!
RLC: I always find it interesting that they’re putting pads on the stone walls. If you hit that at 165 mph it’ll give you a soft death.
GMF: That’s about it. That’s about it. Still, they seem to like doing it. And God knows, I don’t know what would happen to the Island’s economy in the summer without it. I’m always glad to see them come, but I’m personally always glad to see them go. RLC: I agree.
GMF: Of course they’ll be back here in a few weeks time for the Grand-Prix: Note: Grand Prix is the amateur’s TT. RLC: I always find it interesting to see the signs along the road “Fahrens.”
GMF: “Fahren links.” Yes, that’s it. For the Germans. Used to be a lot of Italians came. Not so many now, I don’t think. That was when Agostini won it six years on the run, on the trot. Then he retired, said he wasn’t coming back. Because, he said, it was getting too dangerous. Oh, no one could call him “chicken,” you know. He won the damn thing for six years running. And the Italians haven’t been as prominent as they used to be.
(Note: The signs advising “Stay left” in German are put up during TT and Grand Prix to remind German motorcyclists visiting the Isle to stay to the left.)
RLC: Remember I said, about the President, if I don’t think about it… GMF: Yes…
RLC: It was Rutherford B. Hayes.
GMF: Yes, okay.
RLC: His wife was known as “Lemonade Lucy” because she would never serve any alcohol in the White House.
GMF: Hayes. He’s one of these that you never hear of, you know.
RLC: He didn’t accomplish much because of the deal that had been made and everyone knew it. It (the Presidency) should have gone to the Democrats. But the Democrats would have had the White House with a Congress that was Republican.
GMF: Mind you, I’m not sure that these undistinguished persons aren’t the best Presidents. I mean nothing happens, so, ah, there is a case for saying the best Prime Minister there has been in Britain for a long time was Alec Douglas Hume. Because, as he said himself, in the eighteen months in which he was Prime Minister, nothing happened!
RLC: Are there any current British politicians that you have found interesting, that you like or dislike intensely?
GMF: None that I found interesting. I mean, we are not part of the British political scene, thank God. No, I’m quite content with the fact that the Island has its own little government and, on the whole, it’s pretty non-political, you know, non-party. There’s something comforting about when you’ve got to vote, you’re not voting for someone picked out by a machine and who you don’t know and suspect. We’ve got a chemist in Laxey who’s now our MHK (Member of the House of Keys). Well, there is something comforting about that, because at least you can get at him…if you want to. The last MHK we had before was our doctor, Dr. Mann. I must say, I think it’s…I just hope the Island can stay the way it is. It’s our little bastion of sanity. How long it will last, God alone knows. RLC: Would you be termed a conservative? GMF: Yes. I don’t mean conservative with a capital “C.” I don’t like the present government in England one bit. I think that the Labour government would be even worse. It generally is. But this lot have been in too long. That is the trouble with British politics. There is no one you would willingly vote for.
RLC: It’s true in America, too. GMF: We were in Hollywood at the time of the Bush-Dukakis election, and I remember the gloom that settled over Universal Studios when the result came through. Oh, God! I was a neutral bystander. I didn’t really mind. I was slightly in Bush’s favor because his Vice President was Manx, or at least of Manx descent. Although, I don’t know that he was the greatest, either. I remember poor John Landis the day after the election. It was as though the sky had fallen in. I think…the impression I got the day or two before was that they thought Dukakis was going to win. RLC: They hoped. Hollywood is traditionally liberal. Charlton Heston and a couple like him are conservatives. GMF: An impressive person. He’s a big picture man.
RLC: My wife rewatches Ben Hur every so often.
GMF: On The Prince and the Pauper, he took me aback. He said, “What other English kings can I play?” I tried to think, and I said, “Well, why not go to Edward I?”
RLC: That’s what I was going to say, “Longshanks.”
GMF: Yes. “Because,” I said, “you’re exactly right, physically.”
RLC: Of course, I don’t think he would want to play the “Hammer of Scotland.”
GMF: That’s right. I said, “Get Sean Connery to play Robert the Bruce and you’re well away. He pondered this a long time. I think he would rather play Robert the Bruce.
RLC: Did you ever meet Sean Connery?
GMF: No, never have.
RLC: I thought when you did…Octopussy. But that was Roger Moore. GMF: That was Roger. Yes. No, we’ve sort of almost coincided several times, but never, in fact. Moore’s a nice, laid back man. Didn’t take himself for Bond terribly seriously, unlike Cubby Broccoli, who took it very seriously. When I proposed putting Bond in a gorilla suit in one scene, he reacted with horror. However, Bond did end up in a gorilla suit. In Octopussy, very briefly. RLC: How many Bond pictures did you write? GMF: Just the one. The only person who wrote more than one is…oh, he’s died now…oh God, I’ve forgotten his name. He contributed to every Bond picture, from the beginning. Old Hollywood script writer…gentleman from West Point. He’d retired, pretty well, by the time I came along. Although he and Michael Wilson put in a couple of scenes in my screenplay. I don’t know why. I watched them and wondered what the hell they were all about. Professional charity, probably. They tend to get a different writer for each. Or they did. Now, I think, Michael Wilson does them. RLC: Now that they’re out of the books.
GMF: Yes. Quite. Well, we were pretty well out of the books with Octopussy. It was a short story, a novelette.
RLC: About a marine biologist, really, who loved octopi, not about a woman with a tattoo. GMF: That’s right.
RLC: They were fun. They always were fun.
GMF: They were good fun and they were very professionally made. That was their saving grace. RLC: It was always interesting to see what new gadget could be brought out for Bond to use. And normally the gadgets didn’t work. They would work at first, but there would be something that made it fail. Like the car in Goldfinger that he ended up crashing. It was like they wanted him to have to use something besides the gadgets.
GMF: That’s right. They’re still making one, I think, at the moment. Although I think Cubby Broccoli is not a part of it. I think it’s his daughter and Michael Wilson who are the producers. And it’s a new Bond. It’ll do alright. I think the magic name will still get them.
RLC: Not the mega-hits they were before, but…
GMF: No. Connery and Moore were at their peak. Oh, at MGM, I discovered, when you were working on Octopussy, you could do no wrong. They practically carried you into the building. How are we on this for length?
RLC: Great. Thanks for meeting me. I’ve really enjoyed this. GMF: Well, I’ve enjoyed it, too. Thank you very much.

Doubting the existence of Santa is not new. On September 21, 1897, the editor of The New York Sun newspaper published a reply to a letter from a an 8 year-old girl that has become a classic. In it, he gives that famous line, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Now I am here to say, “I believe in Santa Claus.” (click here for the entire article) He also wrote, “The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.” Maybe part of the reason is that I am Santa Claus, to give the children a Santa to see. Well, not all year, but a few special occasions each year. But more on that later. Let’s talk a little about who Santa Claus is.

St. Nicholas of Myra with a white beard and the red attire of a bishop

Being in love with history, I am compelled to give a little history of the old fellow. The name Santa Claus is derived from the Dutch Sinterklaas (click here for more), a red-cloaked bishop with white hair and beard who brings gifts to good children on the eve of St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6th. His name comes from Saint Nicholas, the Greek Bishop of Myra (now in Turkey), who was known for his generosity (click here for more). Early on, gifts were given to children in some countries on St. Nicholas Day, not on Christmas Day. From Jolly Olde England came Father Christmas. As early as the 1400’s, King Christmas would ride in the Christmas festival on a decorated horse. Remember, Christmas trees were not a part of the English Christmas celebration until German Prince Albert brought them across the Channel when he married Queen Victoria (although they had been a part of the Royal Family’s since the time of George III), so decorating a horse had to do. Over time, he also became known as Father Christmas, an old man in a long, fur-trimmed cloak. However, King Christmas was known for bringing fine food and drink to the Christmas celebration, lots of it, rather than toys for children.

Father Christmas

When the Puritans took control of England in the mid-17th century and banned the celebration of holidays, originally Holy Days, by anything but church attendance, Father Christmas was a casualty. He also became a cause célèbre for the Royalists who longed for a return to the wilder, less restrictive days of the Stuart kings. After the Restoration, when Charles II regained the throne, poor Father Christmas had served his purpose and was almost forgotten. However, in the Victorian Age, he returned to prominence as the spirit of Christmas. In fact, the Ghost of Christmas Present in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a version of Father Christmas, dispensing Christmas cheer from his torch. Check out the movie version with George C. Scott for a great example of how he looked to the English of that era (more on that and other versions of the movie here). But how did he join with Sinterklaas to become Santa Claus? That’s an American tale.

Thomas Nast’s 1881 Santa Claus

When Clement Moore’s (click here for author dispute) “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (also known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas”) was published in 1823, it created much of the mythos. (click here for the entire poem) This was the first time we have a sleigh with the reindeer numerated and named. St. Nicholas is dressed in fur (not red, though) and comes down the chimney to fill stockings. While much of this is in the Dutch tradition, he does his good work on Christmas Eve or early that morning, not on St. Nicholas Day! Next came Thomas Nast’s drawings that appeared in Harper’s Weekly from 1863 through 1886. Nast is best known for creating the elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party and the donkey for the Democrats, but also did Santa. His elaborate drawing of “Santa Claus and His Works,” was included in an 1869 printing of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and gave Santa his now-traditional red attire. St. Nicholas had become Santa Claus. Nast also gave us Santa’s home in the North Pole that he termed “Santa Claussville, N.P.” and evolved Santa from a short elf into a full-grown man. The drawing of Santa he did in 1881 is much like the current standard concept of Santa, except for the politically incorrect pipe. Thank you, Thomas, for giving us our Santa.

Santa and Coca Cola

In the movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” the young Alfred says, “there’s a lot of bad ‘isms’ floatin’ around this world, but one of the worst is commercialism.” Yet, it is a commercial ad campaign that refined our image of Santa Claus. Nast’s Santa looks dated to us now, too 19th century. It was Coca Cola that gave us the 20th century version that we still identify as the real Santa. Although Coca Cola began using Santa in its ad campaigns in the 1920’s, it was Haddon Sundblom who drew the ones in the 1930’s until the 1960’s that we now consider the real Santa. Since Santa didn’t and wouldn’t get any residuals from his images, the jolly old elf was the perfect promoter for Coke. Still, we do get to enjoy the art and Haddon’s images are our image of Santa to this day, so that wasn’t all bad. (click here for the Coca Cola Santa story)

Santa Claus and a true believer at the Roamin Angel Toy Drive in 2015

So what about me being Santa? I believed in Santa as a child. When I found that he was my dad, it didn’t damage my psyche. I appreciated the magic that my parents gave me at Christmas, how they made the holiday even more special. Since Christmas is about God’s gift of his Son as a child to mankind, isn’t there something appropriate about having a saint’s namesake bring gifts to children? Even the idea of naughty and nice lists teaches accountability for our actions. I still believe in Santa. In the mid-1970’s, my parents gave me a Santa suit for Christmas. It was not an expensive one and they did so more as a joke, but it began a change in my life. I wore it to our towing company Christmas party at a local restaurant, kidding around with the office staff and the drivers. One of the drivers was sitting on my knee, telling me what he wanted for Christmas, when a waiter came up and told me a little boy would like to talk to Santa. I went over to his table and took him on my knee. As he told me of his Christmas wishes, it all changed. It was no longer a joke. I was taking on the mantle. Since then, I have been Santa for many children, including my own daughter. I only hope I have given as much joy to them as they have given to me.

Santa MacClaus and Mikey MacElf ring that bell.

I have also appeared as Santa MacClaus, ringing the bell for the Salvation Army at Christmas. The response has been great. Seeing people laugh at the Scottish Santa and contribute to help others at Christmas is wonderful. Having the kids, eyes going wide to see Santa in a kilt, is hilarious. Interestingly, none of the kids have a problem with that, Santa is Santa no matter what. And the cause is great for Claus. All the money we raise goes to help others in our local community, whether it be for toys and clothes at Christmas or to keep the homeless from freezing to death in cold weather, it’s worth a little of my time. Plus I love being Santa, bringing joy where I can. I will keep doing it as long as I am able. After all, I believe in Santa.

Over Memorial Day weekend, I will be attending the United Scottish Society’s Scottish games in Costa Mesa, CA, known as Scottish Fest, (click here for info) selling my Celtic saga, Three Legs of the Cauldron. Alas, I have only attended Scottish Games in California, so my impressions are not of any Games in Scotland. Those are competitions in athletics and dancing, far different than the Celtic fairs of America. Even the one at Braemar that the Queen regularly attends and draws about 20,000 people is focused on the competitions. There will be kilts and pipe bands, but no clan booths or musicians (sorry, pipers, I mean no slight to your musical talents). They harken back 950 years to the time of Malcolm II, known as Canmore or Bighead, who is said to have had the games as a way to have Scots compete with each other without someone literally losing his head. Since he’s the guy who killed the historical Macbeth, there may be some irony there. But I digress. Back to the New World.

Lady Saltoun, chief of the name Fraser and Lord Lovat, chief of the Lovat Frasers

The games in America are more of a fair or festival, hence the name Scottish Fest for Costa Mesa. I first attended these games when they were held at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona. It was 1981, a hot Sunday afternoon, and my little clan (family) barely made it to them before closing time. They were a rather small affair then, but I was bitten by the Scottish bug. My nearest tie is through my father’s mother, a Fraser. A couple of years later, I went to the games the Clans of the Highlands used to hold in Chino as a member of Clan Fraser Society of North America. Although a small games, they had the necessary components of a games in America: clan tents, vendors of about every item Scottish and not so Scottish as well as food and drink, and Scottish, or at least Celtic, musical entertainment. Oh, yes, they also had Scottish athletic and dancing competitions as well as pipe bands. Other games might add a Highland animal exhibit, sheepdog competitions, whisky tasting, historical re-creationist groups (Want to meet Mary, Queen of Scots? Well, not the real one, since she’d be rather decomposed by now, but someone who has taken a lot of time to learn to act like she would have. She just might be there.), and even odd events like beard competitions.

Caber Toss

What do the Games in Scotland and the Scottish Games in America have in common? Much. The athletic competitions always have some uniquely Scottish events. The most dramatic is the caber toss, which has been termed the telephone-pole toss by those of non-Scottish descent. Some burly guy in a kilt balances a log the size of a telephone pole upright against his shoulder, slowly trots ahead and heaves it upward so that it lands on the other end and falls forward. It’s supposed to land perfectly upright and fall directly away from the competitor. Take it from me, it’s not easy even with a smaller, practice one. (click here to see) Then there is the stone toss. It’s like shot putting, except with an irregularly shaped stone weighing about 18 lbs. and done with no approach, feet firmly planted. (click here to see) Next is the weight toss over a bar, similar to a pole vault bar. The 56 lb. weight has a ring attached for gripping and tossed over a bar 18 ft. or more directly overhead. Not keeping an eye on the weight could be fatal. (click here to see) Then there’s a 28 lb. weight toss for distance. Finally, there is the 22 lb. hammer throw for distance. This is also an Olympic event. In the Scottish games, the big guys throw it 185 ft. or more. (click here to see) In the Olympics, the record is 284 ft. Of course, the Olympic hammer is 6 lbs. lighter and has an easily-gripped handle on the end of a chain instead of a simple pole! Maybe the Scottish one is a little too much for the rest of the world. The real kicker is that, unlike the Olympics, Scottish heavy competitors compete in all these events and over a relatively short period of time. Not exactly the same, is it?

Highland Fling

Another common ground for Scotland and America are the dancers. Highland dancing is not done with a partner and is energetic, to say the least. The sword dance is done over a pair of crossed swords, supposedly originally done by Malcolm Bighead celebrating his victory over Macbeth. If a dancer touches one of the swords in this difficult dance, he or she loses major points. (click here to see) The Highland fling requires the dancer to stay in the same spot while going through fast and rigorous steps. (click here to see) Both of these are performed mainly on tiptoe. Although there are other dances like the sailor’s hornpipe, these are the essentials of Highland dance competitions. There is no improv in any of these dances. The dancer must learn the steps and follow them.

Lone Piper

The last commonalities for the New World and the Old World games are pipers and the kilts. Pipe bands are the mainstay for the music at the games. You can hear pipers practicing their music, often eerily wafting through the games. You either love them or you hate them. There is a joke that says that a bad piper sounds like someone strangling a cat. A good piper sounds like someone strangling a cat gently. However, if you’ve got any Scots blood in your veins, the sound of a good pipe band will send cold chills down your spine. (click here to see and hear) I remember when my wife and I were first in Scotland in 1986, we were driving along a glen when we saw some red deer and got out for a photo. It was about 11:00 at night, but still twilight and the hills along the burn were covered with heather. There was not a person or a house in sight. A lone piper was playing somewhere in the far distance, echoing along the glen. It was so beautiful it almost brought tears to my eyes. (click here to listen) I am a Scot, not only by some of the blood in my veins, but in m heart.

James Bond in a traditional kilt. No one to mess with.

And then there is the kilt. I cannot take the time to go into the entire history of the kilt and tartans, but what has evolved is a pleated wool garment with a tartan that is registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans. For most, that means a Scottish Highland clan or Lowland family. In America, you will see many men in these kilts at the games. but many more who are not. They are custom tailored, somewhat expensive and, quite frankly, take a little courage to wear. Although, as I said, I have not been to any Games in Scotland, I would imagine that is the case there. Here, however, things have changed since I got my kilt in 1983. Now there are Utilikilts and their Pakistani knock-offs. These are off-the-rack, made in heavy cotton, solid-color or camo instead of tartan cloth and (shudder) have pockets. While it’s a free country and anyone can wear whatever they wish, I will never wear a Utilikilt. To me, it would be like wearing Jockey underwear (Y-fronts for my British friends) and calling them swim trunks: not the same thing and rather embarrassing to be seen in in public. An American site summarized my thoughts very well. “They took a traditional garb and perverted it. A kilt is a symbol of Scotland and its history. A Utilikilt is someone trying to functionalize culture.”

Scary dude in Utilikilt

It’s like wearing white athletic shoes with a tux: just not right. If you figure the cost of my kilt for the 30-plus years I’ve owned it, it’s not that much, far less than an iPhone and lasting far longer. If you want to show your Scottish heritage, do it with the real thing and not a cheap substitute. When you walk in a real kilt, there is a “swoosh” of the fabric side to side. When you walk in a Utilikilt, it hangs stiffly down. A U.K. site called it, “hardly a kilt at all, but a man skirt, marketed as a kilt.” If you wear a Utilikilt, just be honest and say it’s a man-skirt. Like a man-purse or a man-bun, it’s a masculine version of a feminine fashion item.

Wicked Tinkers- not exactly traditional Scottish music.

But back to the games. For Americans, they are a Scottish festival as well as competitions. The music reflects that, although I do wish there were more in the traditional style than the modern, rock-type, but the organizers book what draws the crowds. While they’re not to my taste, I guess I can live with that. The vendors provide a chance for purchasing British food and drink, Celtic jewelry, British knick-knacks and Celtic-themed clothing that varies from T-shirts to kilts and tracing your name’s ancestry. There are also books on Celtic topics, which is where I fit in. As I said, I will be autographing and selling Three Legs of the Cauldron at the Celtic Nook booth in Costa Mesa as well as Pleasanton, CA, over Labor Day weekend. (click here for info) Then there is that American innovation, clan tents.

Clan tents

For native Scots, they consider clan membership to be a matter of birth, not joining. If you’re born a Fraser in Scotland, you are a member of the clan. However, in America (and I now understand in a number of other countries as well), you join a clan society. Requirements vary, but most bend over backwards to find a way to include those interested in membership. We are a nation of mutts, so pure-blooded Scots are rare and oft times the connection is many generations back. Many clan societies have ties with the clan chief or chief of the name in Scotland, but there is no copyright on a name and some are not connected with Scotland at all. Nonetheless, it is all about preserving our Celtic heritage. In this modern, mobile and transitory society, many of us are looking for roots, a tie to the past that will keep us grounded in the present. Having manned the Clan Fraser Society of North America clan tent as Southern California Convener for many years, there is a special place in my heart for those who put time, effort and money into preserving this heritage. That great duo, Men of Worth, have made a tongue-in-cheek song about them entitled The Clan Tent Cavaliers. (Click here to listen) At the clan tents, diasporan Scots can find their connection to their heritage. Dedicated volunteers are more than willing to share their research and knowledge with any who stop by. It’s all free. If you attend the games in America and have any Scottish name in your ancestry, take the time to check out your clan tent. It’s a part of the Scottish games experience in America.

This is Alice’s 150th birthday and she certainly doesn’t show her age. You’d never believe she’s a day over 100. Like the brainy Athena from the skull of Zeus, Alice sprang from the imagination of Lewis Carroll. While oft mistakenly considered merely children’s books, both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (shortened to Alice in Wonderland) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There (shortened to Through the Looking Glass) are not simplistic. True, they can be taken on the children’s level, where they are amusing and entertaining. Queen Victoria enjoyed Alice so much that she sent for all Lewis Carroll’s other books and was surprised to receive mathematics treatises. You see, Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an Oxford don of mathematics. Droll, erudite wit permeated both books. Even his pen name is a reversal of the Latin translation of his first and middle names. Originally, he planned to use an anagram of them, Edgar Cuthwellis, but his publisher thankfully nixed that idea. So Charles translated his names to Carolus Ludovicus, then swapped them around and Anglicized them to Lewis Carroll. Simple, eh?

Alice Liddell at 8 years oldJuly 1860

Although books have been written about why he penned Alice’s tales and what then happened, the short version is that the bachelor don took the three daughters of his friend and college dean, Henry George Liddell, out rowing on July 4th, 1862. Ten-year old Alice, the middle child, begged him to tell them a story. He spun a fanciful tale about a young girl named Alice who followed a white rabbit down a hole to Wonderland. At Alice’s urging, he put it on paper. The working title was Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Fortunately, Carroll was persuaded to change it because the book might be thought to have something to do with mining, but he did give a handwritten copy with that title to Alice in 1863. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published on November 26th, 1865. While Dodgson expected to sell about 400 books, it was soon a runaway hit. It continues to have many incarnations, including ones by Disney, Depp and even a porno version. Alice’s tales have become a mainstay of children’s (and adult) fiction.

Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall before the fall

All this is nice, but so what? It doesn’t make these books of enduring quality or Mensa standing. Although Dodgson was a mathematician, there are no profound formulas or theorems of great repute in the two books. Instead, it is the way he uses the English language, the banter and brilliance, the puns and portmanteaus that stand the test of time. Consider that scrambled egghead, Humpty Dumpty, who uses “glory” to describe a “nice knock-down argument,” in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There. It sounds like nonsense, right? Yet it had to do with a linguistic debate as to whether words have an intrinsic meaning that is inbuilt and inherent or whether they can be defined or redefined at will. When Carroll wrote the books, there was a strong school of linguistic thought that words had an intrinsic meaning. Few now follow that school and the other view seems to be what we now follow. “Cool” has nothing to do with temperature, but with popular acceptance. “Sweet” doesn’t describe the sugar content of a food, but means “cool.” “Ill” doesn’t mean sick, but “cool” or “sweet.” Who knows what the newest and latest word will be tomorrow. Since traditional dictionaries cannot keep pace with this rapid “evolution,” there are even “urban dictionaries” to help you keep up on this ever-changing patois of the youth culture, since yesterday’s youth are today’s AARP. The upshot, it seems, is that Humpty was right when he said, “When I use a word, . . . it means just what I chose it to mean.” An existential etymology. Meaning of words do change over time, although that has been greatly accelerated in the last few decades. Not exactly the stuff of a children’s book.

Jabberwocky.The stuff that fantasy is made of.

Another bit of linguistic wit is the poem “Jabberwocky,” which I can still stumble through by memory to this day. Again, it is from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Saw There and found by Alice in a book. It is a masterpiece of pun and portmanteau words. In fact, Carroll first coined that phrase for “two meanings packed up into one word.” A portmanteau is a small suitcase with two equal compartments (ever hear of one now?), so Carroll used it to describe two words combined into one with elements of both. Who does not understand that a motel is a motorists hotel? Or that a brunch is a combination of breakfast and lunch? Even the air many breathe has long been smog, or smoke and fog. But the list keeps growing, with Labradoodle (Labrador Retriever/poodle mix) and frappuccino (frappe/cappuccino blend) now common parlance. But grue as green and blue? Chuggers from charity and muggers, meaning people who accost you for contributions for their favorite cause? To me, chuggers were guys who downed mugs of beer quickly. But I’m obviously dated. I could go on, but there are far too many to list here. And all this came from Lewis Carroll. Consider this poem, which I quote in full because I like it and it’s my blog. Hmmm. My web log?

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

While it may seem like nonsense words, Carroll had specific meanings in mind for some of them, which he has Humpty Dumpty explain. Some are portmanteau words, some are variations or derivations of normal words and some are whimsys. Here is Humpty’s explanations.

“Brillig”: four o’clock in the afternoon — the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.

“Slithy”: lithe and slimy. ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active’.

“Toves”: curious creatures that are something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews. They make their nests under sun-dials and live on cheese.

“To gyre”: to go round and round like a gyroscope.

“To gimble”: to make holes like a gimblet.

“Wabe”: the grass-plot round a sun-dial. It is called like that because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it. And a long way beyond it on each side.

“Mimsy”: flimsy and miserable

“Borogove”: a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round; something like a live mop.

“Mome rath”: a ‘rath’ is a sort of green pig. Humpty Dumpty is not certain about the meaning of ‘mome’, but thinks it’s short for “from home”; meaning that they’d lost their way.

“To outgrabe”: ‘outgribing’ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle.

The question I posit is that, even without an explanation of the words, do you understand the action, the basic concept? The words bring images to mind, perhaps a little different for each reader. Vorpal sword. Manxome foe. Uffish thought. Snicker-snack. Beamish boy. You get a feeling for the intent without fully understanding the meaning. It is a masterful stroke of lexical lightheartedness.

Cheshire CatPheline Philosopher orFeline Filosofer?

I tend to menander (mentally wander) a bit, so I will close with another favorite of mine, the Cheshire cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He explains to Alice why he is mad.

“And how do you know that you’re mad?” “To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?” I suppose so, said Alice. “Well then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

In other words, madness (insanity, not anger) is going against expected behavior, not diminished mental capabilities. By such a standard, I am happily mad. When Alice asks him which road to take, he gives her another delightfully illogically logical answer that pretty much sums up the way many live their lives.

Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?”“I don’t know,” Alice answered.“Then,” said the cat, “it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

Try explaining these concepts to an eight-year-old. Yet an eight-year-old can enjoy Alice’s adventures without worrying about deeper meanings. That is the genius of Lewis Carroll. Happy birthday, Alice. You look marvetastic.

Well, here we go again. In the latest episode, “King” David, or Drew, talked many times about wanting to move to the Isle of Man permanently and getting a job driving taxi and/or being on the radio. It is pure bunk. I moved there with my family in 1994. At the time, I had the personal recommendation of the British Consul and still had to write what was, in effect, an essay explaining why it would be good for the Isle to let me in. I had heard that it was even more difficult to be admitted now, so I checked it out.

Isle of Man 1994 Yearbook, which KD obviously never read.

The only chance KD has is General Migrant, since his claim of kinship is not a grandparent, which is the most distant relative allowed for claiming kinship. According to the official Isle of Man government site (not KD’s “official” site), requirements for “indefinite leave to remain” on the Isle under General Migrant are (click here):

The applicant must have spent a continuous period of 5 years lawfully in the Isle of Man, of which the most recent period must have been spent with leave as a Tier 1 (General) Migrant, in any combination of the following categories:

(i) as a Tier 1 (General) Migrant,

(ii) as a Highly skilled Migrant,

(iii) as a Work Permit Holder,

(iv) [Not used],

(v) [Not used],

(vi) as a Writer, Composer or Artist,

(vii) as a Tier 2 (General) Migrant, a Tier 2 (Minister of Religion) Migrant or a Tier 2 (Sportsperson) Migrant, or

(viii) as a Tier 2 (Intra-Company Transfer) Migrant

Work permit holders don’t include taxi drivers or “radio personalities,” obviously, so what are his chances of getting a temporary “right to remain” under that category and hanging in for 5 years to make it permanent? Since the changes to the law in 2010, they are nil. Here’s what it says: Tier 1 (General) Migrants This route is now closed except for indefinite leave to remain applications.That means that unless he was already there as a General Migrant in 2010 when the law was changed, that road onto the Isle is closed to him. Thank God.

Perhaps KD might be able to hold a job for 30-48 days, but that’s it. So it’s all a joke, just like KD. No immigration, no job. It looks like he didn’t check it out, TLC didn’t check it out or they both ignored the laws. Most likely, there was no intention of KD and family moving to the IOM, just making a little “Reality TV” drama.

Then came KD”s plan for an “investiture” of “knights,” an incredible farce. Lord K thought it was a good idea. Since he bought his title and KD has previously tried to sell “knighthoods” as “King of Mann” for 40,000 pounds, perhaps he thought he would get a kick-back for titles sold. But KD had a hard time giving them away. Stu Peters, a personality on Manx Radio accepted, possibly taking the mick out (pulling the leg) of KD, because it would make an interesting radio program. Mol Holmes, the kind fellow who loaned KD a bathtub for the Castletown Tin Bath Race, refused. Typically a Manxman who says much with few words, he merely stated, “That’s pushing it a bit.” But “Push” is KD’s middle name. Or one of them. I have a few more I could add.

After a ludicrous rehearsal at the ruins of Peel Castle (not named in the show), he decides to ask his “royal etiquette expert,” Lady Cruella, I mean Lady C, if he should go through with it. For once, I agreed with her. “That is the official act of an acknowledged monarchy,” she told him. “You are not an acknowledged monarch. You are a claimant. No phony investitures.” The whale started to blubber. “I don’t want to be an embarrassment,” he said. WHAT! That’s all he is. Without embarrassment, he wouldn’t exist. Lady C notes that European men don’t break into tears so easily. It should be noted that neither to American men with cajones.

You’re live on Manx Radio!

I did love when Stu Peters interviewed him on Manx Radio. Promised knighthood or not, the velvet glove was off the mailed fist. As KD sat, doing some spastic boogie with his hands before the interview, he bragged about not preparing. It was soon obvious. Stu stated that the House of Keys had categorically rejected KD’s claim, then asked KD three things he would do as king, if they suddenly did an about-face. KD was like a deer in the headlights, sitting there with a typically stupid look on his face and saying nothing. Finally, Stu threw him a bone, asking if he would reduce income taxes. KD took the bait and said he would reduce them. Guess what? the Isle of Man is a tax haven, having taxes far lower than the UK or Ireland, and the USA. With a maximum rate or 20% and no capital gains or inheritance taxes, many rich seek to live there for that reason. But KD was too stupid to even check out such basics about his “kingdom.” His closing statements were well-considered to win friends and influence people, especially the Manx. “I am the king. That’s a fact,” he pronounced on air. “You’d better get used to it. I’m the king and I’m here to stay.” Afterwards, when talking with his wife, he said he thought the interview went okay. Another case of a grand delusion.

KD continued to display lack of class, and poor taste to the end of the episode. When it came to taking his wife out for a special night on the town, what did KD and his wife wear? Jeans. While America is more casual in attire than the Isle of Man, we are not all slobs. When we lived on the Isle and went to a quality restaurant, I wore a coat and tie. And not with jeans. Maybe he was taking Pam to that Scottish restaurant in Douglas: McDonald’s. Probably splurged and bought her a Big Mac. And three for himself, to maintain his impressive physique. Or should that be Himself?

In closing, let me quote from other sources on the Net and comment.

According to Fox News: Howe filed a claim with Her Majesty’s Stationary Office on Dec. 20, 2006, they published the claim in Queen Elizabeth II’s paper of record, the London Gazette, and after no one objected, they sent him a crown, robe and anointing spoon for the ceremony, he said. “It kind of blew up into something big,” Howe said. “I’m certainly not challenging the Queen’s authority or sovereignty over the island. I haven’t amassed an army or anything like that to invade, so I’m certainly not a threat at all.”

I’m your king. Resistance is futile.

Although I’ve already discussed why no one responded, who the heck sent him “a crown, a robe and an anointing spoon?” I will go out on a limb here and definitely state it wasn’t the Queen. As to KD not “amassing an army,” I’d love to see him and any idiots he might garner to invade the Isle go up against the United Kingdom Special Forces. Really. I’d love to see it. Actually, the Manx wouldn’t need any help from the UK to kick his “royal” butt.

According to TLC, KD got an invitation to the Duke and Duchess’s royal wedding. Why hasn’t he shown it anywhere, including on his official website (Click here)? Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

When my wife told me she’d recorded a new program on the grossly misnamed The Learning Channel (TLC) entitled Suddenly Royal about an American who is trying to claim his title as the King of Man, I was appalled. We had lived there for five years and I did my Masters’ thesis about the Isle of Man during the 17th century and read a lot of Manx history. I knew his claim was rubbish, at best. However, we decided to watch it for the scenery of a place that was near and dear to our hearts. Sadly, so far we’ve seen too much of “King” David “Drew” Howe and far too little scenery.

Bonnie Prince CharlieA Pretender With A Real Claim

So, you may have seen King Ralph and think it’s a similar case, a long-lost relative inherits the throne when everyone else suddenly kicks the bucket. Not so. Drew had his ancestry done and found out that he is the direct line descendant of Lord Thomas Stanley, the last man to hold the title of King of Man. I’m assuming that’s what he found, but no proof of this has ever been provided. I’m reminded of “Prince” Michael Stewart, who I met in 1990. He was a pretender (unproven claimant) to the throne of Scotland, saying that he was descended from an unrecorded, yet legitimate, son of Bonnie Prince Charlie. He refused to show me his proof, saying the Queen didn’t have to prove her claim. Ever hear of him? I thought not. Last I knew, he was still living in a one-room apartment in Edinburgh. Maybe I’ll tell more of his story another time.

Drew was an “auto-service manager” living in Frederick, MD, when he found out about his “royalty.” He posted an official claim to be the King of Man in the London Gazette in 2007 and, because no one protested, it’s official now. Or so he says. “Prince” Michael Stewart did the same thing decades ago. Since he is now universally recognized the King of Scotland, that must work. Right. I’m thinking of posting a notice there that I’m the King of Sky. I mean Skye. Medialife Magazine: One definition of the word “pretender” is “a person who pretends.” Another is “a claimant to a throne.” On the show, he’s a pretender in the first sense. He pretends to believe that his claim isn’t silly and that he’s going to the island not because he’s being paid to by the TV show but because he’s trying to press his claim. He and his wife, Pam, and their 12-year-old daughter, Grace, pretend that the things they do and the things that happen to them aren’t set up for the cameras. Drew says, “A couple days ago, the local paper on the Isle of Man came out attacking me.”

Hmmm. I wonder how’d I’d feel about someone claiming ownership of all of California because of a Spanish land grant?

World Tin Bath Championship, Castletown Photo by BBC News

Drew sets off to win the hearts of the Manx people by entering the Isle of Man Tin Bathtub Race in Castletown. Organizer David Collister described it as, “People just like to have fun and the spectators come because they like to see people get wet and they like to see people sink. It’s two hours of family fun and slapstick entertainment involving household tin baths that your granny will have used in front of the fire.” Drew dresses in a clownish king costume and participates. I guess that, since the Queen did not, that makes him a winner. Or a wiener. Definitely a pretender in the first sense.

If “King” Drew wanted to participate in an event that would gain the respect of the Manx people, he should try the long-running, world-famous TT Motorcycle Road Race. There’s nothing slapstick about it and it takes real cajones to ride in it. Click here to find out why.

However, he is advised on how to be the new “King of Man” by two upstanding members of the British nobility and long term Manx residents: Lady Colin Campbell and Lord Kevin Couling. Well, maybe not. First neither of them live on the Isle of Man. Secondly, there is a matter of character. You be the judge.

In spite of her name, Lady Colin Campbell is not Scottish. Lady Colin Campbell, a.k.a. Lady Poison Pen, was previously Georgia Ziadie. She was born in Jamaica to a Lebanese father and English, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish mother. She had a terrible childhood and her marriage to Lord Colin Campbell, younger brother of the Duke of Argyll, was just as bad. It lasted fourteen months and she divorced him, claiming abuse and that he was a drunken addict. Yet, she continues using his name forty years later. Why? Perhaps because it does give her more credibility as a writer of exposés of the Royals, from whence comes the Lady Poison Pen title.

According to the Daily Mail: We are talking in the wake of a vociferous outcry in the media this week at the salacious and utterly unsubstantiated allegations in her new book The Untold Life Of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. If she doesn’t draw definitive conclusions in the book, she does hold all manner of gossip up to the light for examination. For one thing, she suggests that the Queen Mother — as well as her younger brother David — was the natural child of her father and the family cook, Marguerite Rodiere, because her mother was too fragile to have another baby after a nervous breakdown following the death of one of her older children. The second bombshell is that the present Queen and her late sister Princess Margaret were conceived by artificial insemination, because their mother didn’t like sex . . . . She points out in her book that the artificial insemination story has been doing the rounds as a rumour in some circles for years (which is certainly true) and that she had it ‘from several sources’. Which, naturally, doesn’t mean it’s true. And, happily for her, since all the players are now dead, no one can prove the point one way or the other. There is no doubt that she loves to shock and can be horribly poisonous. Indeed, much of what Lady Colin says should, I suspect, be taken with a large pinch of salt.

No doubt, she sees “KIng” Drew as a way to get more publicity for her books, as well as a paycheck from TLC. But surely the soft-spoken Lord Kevin Couling, who Drew said, “works with a lot of royal families,” is far better. Right? I’ll let the press describe him and his companion. Mrs. Victoria Ayling.

According to the Mail on Sunday: Victoria Ayling, a high-profile ‘trusted ally’ of UKIP leader Nigel Farage, joined the openly racist party and attended its rallies as a student, according to her former husband, a friend and even her own mother. A Mail on Sunday investigation has also discovered Mrs Ayling is being investigated by police after allegedly making abusive comments about her former husband – who is a transvestite. The Mail on Sunday can also reveal that Mrs Ayling and her new partner, Lord Kevin Couling – who purchased his title, the 64th Lord of Little Neasden (my emphasis)– are also being investigated by police for an alleged hate crime against Mr Ayling.

But does “Lord” Kevin agree with Mrs. Ayling’s politics? Spiegel online quotes him:“Nowadays, you almost have to be ashamed to be British,” says her (Mrs Ayling) partner, Kevin Couling. In school, children learn a great deal about the Holocaust and the women’s suffrage movement, he says, but not much about the country’s history. “They can’t even name the British kings.” Besides, says Couling, Polish and Latvian immigrants are taking away jobs in the asparagus fields.

I feel sorry for all those native-born British who lost their asparagus-picking jobs to a bunch of Slavs. But Kevin came to England from New Zealand, bought his title, and is taking a paycheck from TLC that could have gone to a native-born British lord, so maybe he shouldn’t speak. According to The Armorial Register Limited, “Lord” Kevin is “Kevin Derek Couling, Lord of the Manor of Little Neston,” a title tied to the estate rather than hereditary. Don’t look for famous lords and ladies in that registry, they’re not there. Furthermore, Kevin registered his coat of arms in Serbia! Cheaper, I’m sure, and maybe he got a few Serbs in to help pick his asparagus.

Finally, here is a caveat posted on the Armorial Registry website that should tell you who registers their arms there: The Armorial Register Limited is aware that at the present time proving the validity of the ownership of a manor and its associated right to be known as “Lord of the Manor of” is fraught with difficulty. There are an ever growing number of businesses on the Internet only too willing to satisfy a seemingly endless consumer demand for “titles” and it seems that Manors and the right of their owners to be known as Lords have become the easiest target for less than scrupulous dealers. Our best advice is Caveat emptor “Let the buyer beware”.

Now that you have the cut of “King” Drew’s advisers, what about any validity of his claim? Could he be king? No. In spite of what was said on the show, the Stanleys were the LAST kings of Mann, not the first. Haraldr Óláfsson termed himself King of Mann and the Isles in 1237 and at least six other rulers after that held that title before the Stanleys. Thomas Stanley made the ruler of Man the Lord of Mann instead of the King of Mann in 1504. That cannot be changed. The Isle of Man was sold to the Crown by the Duke of Atholl in 1765. It doesn’t matter who anyone is descended from, the Queen is also the Lord of Man now. Any Manx schoolchild knows this. Of course, you have to be bright enough to read a little history.

House of Keys Logo

Lastly, notice that “King” Drew pushes his claim with no one who has authority on the Isle. To date, no MHK (Member of the House of Keys, the Manx parliament) has been on the show. No Deemster, or judge, has chatted with him. His Excellency Lieutenant Governor Adam Wood has not received him at Government House (as I was received by His Excellency Sir Timothy Daunt while I lived there). Instead, he tries to push his claim with a few locals in pubs and with people who do not have any authority. When the “King” met with the Curreys, grandmother Heather, son Richard and grandson Cosmo, they gave him the go-ahead to pursue his claim. “King” Drew acted like they were his only possible rivals. I was puzzled. Who were they? The short answer: no one who had any say in the matter. The long answer is below, but feel free to skip it. Unless you are really into history. I’d love it if you read it, since it took a lot to dig all this up. I will understand if you don’t.

James Stanley- 10th Earl Of Derby

Under the Stanleys, the title Lord Strange (an English title) was given to the son of the Earl of Derby until he inherited the earldom. When James Stanley, 10th Earl of Derby, died in 1736 “without issue,” the title of Lord Strange and its barony, along with the Isle of Man, went to John Murray, 2nd Duke of Atholl, through the Stanley female line. Since the earldom had to go only through the male line, it went to a distant cousin. At the death of the 9th Duke of Atholl and 14th Baron (or Lord) Strange, James Thomas Stewart-Murray, in 1957, the title of Lord Strange and the Barony of Strange went into abeyance. Charlotte Murray, the third oldest daughter of the 4th Duke married Admiral Sir Alan Drummond. They had a son, John. John had a son, Malcolm. Malcolm had a son, John, who petitioned to regain and received the title of 15th Lord Strange from the Queen in 1965, but no land came with the title. The title of 17th Lord Strange is currently held by Adam Drummond, who is one of five children and has two healthy children of his own. Interestingly enough, he lives in a small cottage next to the castle that his mother, Baroness Strange, left with all her money to his youngest sister. That’s a story that would be interesting to pursue, but not here. The 15th Lord Strange’s second daughter is Heather, who married Lt. Andrew Currey. Her son is Robert. His son is Cosmo. The chances of Cosmo becoming Lord Strange are little better than mine of winning the lottery. And I never buy any tickets. None of them have any claim on the kingship, lordship or any other title regarding the Isle of Man.

What is the opinion of the Manx about their “King?” According to The Guardian: On Isle of Man websites, residents’ comments range from bewilderment to genuine concern. Mick, from Douglas, wrote: “What started out as an interesting and amusing story of a seemingly self-delusional American has now turned into something quite serious, as the monetary amounts stated are huge. Surely the authorities must intervene.” Kim wrote: “King David- get over yourself! You are NOT our King – you will never be our King. If you’ve got any respect at all you will give up this silly claim.”

So why has “King” Drew continued on this idiotic quest for seven years? He claims it’s for his daughter, but the kid seems bright enough not to really believe his delusions. So, is he deluded, a raving lunatic or something else? It wasn’t until TLC started pumping money into this that he flew to the Isle. Shrewd. He and his family are only there for six weeks. Wise. Then, according to Medialife Magazine, “This may all seem harmless, but that same Telegraph story alleges that Drew was involved with a company that was selling supposed noble titles for as much as 90,000 British pounds (my emphasis). This isn’t mentioned in the premiere.” He’s been doing this since 2007. According to IOM Today:. . . Noble Titles company’s website has been altered to include King David’s title and photograph. Among titles available are a dukedom for 90,000 or you can become a marquess for 80,000. The title of count will set you back 70,000 a countess 60,000 and 50,000 to become a viscount. The website states all proceeds will go to the Malawi Missions Project Charity by instruction of the King of Mann, excluding ‘investiture, regalia and administration costs’. Uh, greedy? As backers of Hollywood movies have often learned, “costs” can eat up every invested dollar. Or pound. So what exactly is King Ralph . .. uh, Drew . . . uh, David? I’ll let you be the judge. If you can stomach the show enough to watch it for the spectacular scenery. And if it survives. Again, according to Medialife Magazine, “The true story behind ‘Suddenly Royal’ might be funny, or dramatic, or tawdry, but the creators of the show seem to have neither the talent nor the intention to tell it.”

In closing, why do I care enough to write this? Because I love the Isle of Man and had many friends there who thought Americans were decent people. If any of the Manx watch Suddenly Royal, their opinion of us will be that we are rude, crude and ignorant. “King” Drew slurping his soup from his spoon and tucking his napkin under his chin? Sure, I know it was orchestrated, with a slim, attractive wife accepting the behavior of her tub-of-lard husband, but “King” Drew went right along with it. The Isle of Man can’t hate the publicity they’re getting from the show, but they also can’t have gained any respect for Americans. We are buffoons of our own making. Thank you, Drew, and TLC for harming the image of Americans in the eyes of the Manx, the British and the European viewers. Your show is truly un-American. As Kim on the Isle of Man said so well, my message to Drew is, “If you’ve got any respect at all you will give up this silly claim.”

My next book, Three Legs of the Cauldron, will be out by Christmas. It is a 6th century Celtic saga of Northeastern Ireland and Western Scotland, the kingdom of Dal Riata. Here is a little history lesson about that little-known place and time. This is a tad long, so consider it, “Everything you wanted to know about Dal Riata, but were afraid to ask. And then some.” Feel free to read it over a couple of days. Or weeks.

You say Dal Riada, or Dalriata, or Dalriada, I say Dal Riata.As with most Gaelic words, there is no authoritative spelling of the kingdom’s name. Here, I will use Dal Riata, like I did in in my book.

Location

Dal Riada

Dal Riata was a kingdom that encompassed part of the current County Antrim in Northern Ireland and stretched across the northern part of the Irish Sea to Scotland’s Kintyre Peninsula (Argyll) and islands in the Inner Hebrides. Although initially it only had the major islands of Islay and Jura, at its zenith in the late 6th and early 7th centuries it expanded to all the Inner Hebrides, including Mull and Arran as well as Skye and even the Isle of Man, although it could not always hold those last two. It was a coastal kingdom, never conquering and holding any inland regions of Scotland and slowly declined until united with Pictish lands to become the kingdom of Alba, then Scotland. Its Irish lands were lost in the mid-seventh century, after the Battle of Mag Rath in 637, although the Dal Riatans seem to have continued to fight in Irish wars alongside their allies, the Ui Neills, until the mid-eighth century.

Geography
Dal Riata consisted mainly of islands and coastal regions. The land was rocky, hilly to mountainous, and windy- not great farmland.

Origins
The origins of the kingdom of Dal Riata are lost to us. It happened before recorded history, so all our records were written, at best, a couple hundred years later. It’s as though no one had written what happened in the early 1800’s or before in American history and we had to rely on the stories handed down through the generations. While some of it might be told accurately, no doubt some would be forgotten, added on to for the sake of a good story or remembered differently by different sources. Can you imagine how the American Revolution might be portrayed if all that survived were accounts handed down over the years by Tories and not written until now?

When did the Irish (or Scotti, as the Romans called them) first settle in Scotland? That’s a matter of continued debate.

1. Some think it started in the 3rd century. In 365 AD, the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellus wrote of Picti and Scotti as raiders of Britannia. But were the Scotti raiding from Ireland or from Scotland?

2. Some think it was later when Dal Riata was settled, perhaps not long before the Duan Albanach (Song of the Scots) says that King Erc’s sons came to Scotland and moved the kingship there. However, it was written in the 11th c, so it’s not accepted as historical proof. Some versions of Senchus Fer nAlban (History of the men of Scotland) also include this.

3. The Venerable Bede wrote that in the late 2nd Century, Cairbre Riada, Son of Conary, King of Ireland, and Grandson of Con of the Hundred Battles, settled on the west coast of Alba. Dal is Gaelic for place or region, making Dal Riada “Riada’s place” or “region of Riada.” That might seem likely, but Bede was an Anglo-Saxon who wrote in the early 8th century who also said Ireland was settled by the Spanish. Some versions of Senchus have a similar tale.

3. We do know some events and people from about 576 A.D. and have a high degree of certainty that Dal Riata was already an established kingdom at that point.

4. A revisionist theory is that the kingdom was not settled by the Irish at all, but a Pictish people that came under the influence linguistically and culturally of the Irish by trade. This is a theory pushed by Scotophiles who might be a little Hibernophobic. Or, lovers of things Scottish who might be anti-Irish.

Now you see the problems in trying to know with a high degree of certainty exactly what happened so many years ago. For the most part, history is made up of opinions and even wishful thinking. But you can take the opinions, try to sort out the fluff and wishful thinking, and come up with your best theory. For me, I think Bede makes sense, since it explains the name of Dal Riata itself. I also think the Duan Albanach explains how the king of Dal Riata came to be in Scotland instead of Ireland. Until some new, long-forgotten text shows up to prove me wrong, it works for me.

Culture
Gaelic Celtic culture, basically the same as Ireland, with cenels, or extended families, being the same as clans. The customs, laws, political structure, mores and values were Irish. Brehon Law would have been the standard.

Food
Hand-sown oats and barley were the grain. The rocky land was difficult to plow, so the yield per acre was low. The stones removed for cultivation did prove a source of building material for house walls and walls to keep in livestock. Beef, mutton, goat, pork and fish, including shellfish, mackerel, herring and salmon, were primary protein sources. Hunting added boar and venison to their diet and gathering brought in wild berries and nuts. Stone querns survive, so we know they ground their grains for breads, soups and such. Cooking cauldrons and shards of cooking pottery have also survived.

Clothing and appearance

Leine and Bratt

Although few examples of clothing have survived, we know that wool was the favorite material, which has warmth and a natural water resistance. A leine or tunic was worn by both sexes, with women’s longer than the men’s. A cape-like woolen cloak, called a bratt, would be pinned with a brooch. Men would wear trews, or trousers, in colder weather. Men wore beards or long mustaches. Ornate jewelry was worn by both sexes, with armlets, bracelets, torcs and brooches most popular. Grooming was important and there is evidence of stone and wood bath tubs, warmed by heated stones, as early as 1200 BC. Men were 5’6″ to 5’9″ and women 5′ to 5’4″.

Transportation

Currach

Many people traveled on foo. Those who could afford to, went on horseback, using trails rather than roads. Few carts or other wheeled vehicles were used due to terrain and lack of roads. Being a coastal kingdom, boats were very important. Currachs, boats made of greased or pitch-covered hides over wicker frames, were used for peace-time commerce as well as for transporting warriors. They had a single, square sail and benches for rowers. Originally, they seem to have been seven-benchers, but later twenty-two was a standard crew, with ten benches with two oarsmen per bench.

Housing

Houses might stand alone or be in small groups, but there were no cities, towns or villages as such.

Roundhouse

Round houses were made with a low wall of stone, timber or mud-and-wattle with a steeply pitched thatched roof. They would normally have one door and no windows. The door often faced the rising sun. They varied in size with the smallest being about 12 ft. around to the largest at about 70 ft. Most were larger and housed an extended family up to 30 people. Internal dividers would give some privacy. Smoke from the central hearth fire filtered through the thatch, but they would have been smoky inside. Sometimes sections were set aside for livestock, especially in the winter, so maybe the odor of the fire helped against other odors.

Crannog

Crannogs were artificial islands built on lakes by using timber pilings, piled lumber and/or stone and dirt rubble as fill. Planks formed the flooring and a timber round house gave protection. A wood causeway connected it to the shore.

Population
According to Senchus, Cenel nOengusa had 430 houses, Cenel Loairn had 420 and Cenel nGabrain had 560. Total population was probably between 7,000 and 8,000.

Religion

Celtic Cross

If the first settlement was in the 3rd c., Dal Riata was initially pagan, with the same gods the Irish had, and later became Christian. Colm Cille (St. Columba, the church dove) founded a monastery on Iona, off the coast of the isle of Mull, in the late 6th c. He was a noble of the powerful Ui Neill’s and is said to have fled there in penance for lives lost in a battle he caused. He is the first person of Christian authority to crown a king in Scotland, that being Aeden in 576 AD on Iona. Colm Cille is credited with bringing Christianity to Scotland, although St. Ninian brought it to southern Scotland. It is on the Isle of Iona that a couple of centuries later the monks created the Book of Kells. It was taken to Kells, Ireland, to save it from destruction by the Vikings.

Political divisions
The kingdom was divided into Cenels, which are similar to Scottish clans, that held lands and had their own Dals, or tribal councils. There were three Cenels named in the Senchus, nOengusa, Cenel Loairn, and Cenel nGabrain. Cenel Comghal apparently was one line of nGabrain that later became independent of it. Check the map for the divisions. Over all of them was the king, who depended on their support both politically and militarily.

Warriors

Gaelic Warriors from My Book

Warriors, for both the army and navy, were required to be furnished by each household. According to the Senchus, Cenel nOengusa would furnish 600, Cenel Loairn would furnish 600 and Cenel nGabrain would field 800. These, of course, are estimates, but equal an available military force of 2000 men for the entire kingdom. Seldom would all be called. They were armed mainly with spears, swords and shields and operated either as foot soldiers or armed sailors. Later in the kingdom, mail shirts and finally metal helms were used. A number of naval battles were fought by the Dal Riatans, evidencing their skill as fighting sailors.

Kings
Kingship was not primogeniture, but normally went to a male within the royal derbfhine, or close family, but a king might just as well be succeeded by an uncle, brother, cousin, or nephew as by a son, elected by the Dal, or cenel council. For many years the kingship of Scottish Dalriata alternated irregularly between the Cenel nGabrain and the Cenel Comghal until the royal line of the Cenel Comghal died out in the 7th Century. At that time, the Cenel Loairn began to compete for the kingship, using the Celtic custom that a derbfhine could submit a candidate for the chieftainship whenever the chief died without a tanist (heir) having been appointed.

Dunadd or Dun Ad

Dun Ad Today

Dun is Gaelic for fort. Dun Ad was the fort of the king of Dal Riata. It is located near Kilmartin on the Kintyre Peninsula, on a rocky hill in the plain near the Add river. At one time, it may even have been an island in the river. We do not know when it was first settled but became the seat of the kings. It has two main, natural levels, with the upper fort or citadel not large, about 40 by 60 ft., only enough for the royal family and a small entourage. There are various clear areas lower where more troops and craftsmen (there is evidence of smelting and metalwork) were housed. It is reached by a steep trail through a natural cleft in the rock that was barred by a gate. At one time timber walls added to the natural defense, but are long gone. A Pictish boar, a cup and a footprint were carved into a rock in the citadel (no longer there) that has fueled many debates over their use. It is not large and has very little water inside the fort, so it was of questionable defensive value. It was conquered at least one time, by the Picts in 736 AD who held it at least until the next century.

Neighbors

The Picts

Pictish Warrior

The Picts never called themselves Picts. Pictus, a Latin word for a painting, was how the Romans termed them because they had pictures painted on their bodies or tattoos, most likely the latter. They would never have called themselves such. They were most likely related to the Britons in the south and spoke a Brythonic Celtic tongue. They were competent warriors and became strong nations in Scotland. Different tribes or petty kingdoms gained supremacy at different times, often uniting all or almost all of Pictland as one. They battled the Dal Riatans and the Angles many times, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. They even occupied the kingdom as foreign rulers. With no written language, we know them from what others wrote about them and from their art.

The Britons
Alt Cult (Strathclyde) was the main Briton kingdom that the Dal Riatans had to deal with. Sometimes they were allies, sometimes foes. The kingdom formed with the fall of the Roman Empire’s rule in Britain and proved strong, native British kingdoms could thrive again, at least for a time. They suffered a major defeat by the Vikings in 870 AD, but the kingdom survived until the Battle of Brunanburh in 973 AD. Wessex’s King Athelstan’s victory over a Norse, Alban, Pictish army ended Strathclyde’s power and it later became a part of Alba, Scotland.

Anglian Warrior

The Angles

Bernicia and Deira were the main Anglian kingdoms during the mid-Dal Riatan period and united to become Northumbria before the Viking invasions. Often termed Saxons in early writings, these Germanic invaders conquered more and more of Britain over the years, finally holding all of the region now called England. They were fearsome fighters who defeated Dal Riatans in battle at times, but never conquered the kingdom.

Highwater mark for Dal Riata
King Aeden is considered the most powerful king of Dal Riata. He is the first king whose reign is accepted by most reputable historians as accurately recorded. Aeden raided Orkney, successfully battled the Picts, regained the Isle of Man, defeated the Maeatae in a bloody battle on the River Forth and formed an alliance with the Ui Neills that secured the safety of his Irish lands. However, when he grew alarmed at the growing strength of the Anglian Bernician king Æthelfrith, he led his forces to Degsastan (somewhere on the Scottish-English border). There, in 603 AD, he suffered a disastrous defeat when his superior numbers were decimated by the Bernicians. He escaped with his life, but never was a major force in Britain again.

End of Dal Riata
Cináed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin) united the Picts and Dal Riata as one kingdom circa 878 AD. Which kingship he had first is a matter of debate, with some claiming the Picts and some the Scots. Whatever the case, the new kingdom was Alba (from the Latin word for Scotland, probably coming from the word “white.” Perhaps from their pale skin?). It was not a conquest by either people, but more of uniting against a new, seemingly unstoppable foe, the Vikings. Much of the coastal lands and islands of Dal Riata were seized by them and the focus of the new kingdom moved inland to Dunkeld.. But that’s another story.

Why not Pictland Instead of Alba? Or the Roman Caladonia? Some claim Alba was the Gaelic term for what the Picts called their kingdom, but there is no proof for that. In fact, at one point it referred to all of Britain. It was not until about 1286 and the Wars of Scottish Independence from England that it is referred to as the Kingdom of the Scots or Scotland. It gave them a national identity rather than that of a family or tribe (clan). It defined the nation as a Gaelic entity, not English. This is further demonstrated by Edward Bruce’s (Robert the Bruce’s brother) unsuccessful attempt to unite Ireland with Scotland. By then, the Picts were almost forgotten. While their art survived, there were no writings in their forgotten tongue. It was the Irish-related Scots Gaelic that was spoken. So Scotland it was to be. And, besides, they would never have referred to themselves as “Picts.”

Primary sources for information on Dal Riata
Scottish kings are listed in the Annals of the Irish Kings
Adomnan’s Life of Columba was written in the 8th C by a monk on Iona.Senchus Fer nAlban (History of the men of Scotland) which was a mythic history, census, and a genealogy of the early kings of Dal Riata, with the earliest existing copy from about the 10th c, probably written in the 7th c.Duan Albanach (Song of the Scots) was written in the 11th century to show the line of Malcolm Canmore (of Shakespearean fame).

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